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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The video above shows astronaut Buzz Aldrin punching out a lunar conspiracy theorist who had been stalking and harassing him. While this happened a few years ago, the recent attempted abduction of Elie Wiesel by a Holocaust denier, who styled himself Eric Hunt, and then bragging about it on Holocaust denial websites.

9/11 conspiracy theorists have been harassing people for years, not just their obscene clustering and chants at Ground Zero. They've been particularly targeting eyewitnesses to the attacks. Like Val McClatchey.

"Val McClatchey snapped the single picture with her new digital camera. The wife and mother had been sitting on the edge of her sofa, clutching her second cup of coffee and watching the smoking towers of the World Trade Center on TV, when she heard the sudden surge of a plane engine, followed by a violent, house-shaking boom. Mrs. McClatchey grabbed the camera and ran onto the front porch of her house along Indian Lake.

"I didn't even aim. I was just like, 'Oh, my God,' " she said. She dropped the camera, jolting the battery loose, then tried in vain to call her husband, son and daughter. She had no idea what she'd captured until the state police put a call out to people in the area, asking for photos, debris and other evidence. She took a printout of her photo to the police, she said, and, within an hour, FBI agents were at her house.

The real estate agent has recently become a target of bloggers calling themselves "9-11 researchers," who are seeking to prove that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers, pierced the Pentagon and crashed United Airlines Flight 93.

They have visited Mrs. McClatchey's office and called her at home, posting satellite maps of her property and accusing her of digitally altering her photo to insert a fake smoke plume. People have called her at home, accusing her of being anti-American and of "holding the photo hostage." On a simple Google search, Mrs. McClatchey's name now pops up in the same sentence as "total fraud."

Given the headaches of a lawsuit and the blunt personal criticism from the bloggers, Mrs. McClatchey wonders if her quick decision to grab her camera that morning nearly five years ago and capture the last puff smoke that was Flight 93 was the right one. But she is glad to be able to give something back to the families of the dead, and thinks her photo will stand the test of time and conspiracy theorists.

"The truth speaks for itself," she said."

And that is exactly the problem for the conspiracy theorists struggling to replace the truth with their lies. The eyewitnesses.

They can finesse the facts of what happened by stringing together a bunch of claims, conspiracy theories buttressed by finding or manufacturing some inconsistencies. Put together into a book or video presentation or website, it can have an impact on the gullible.

But the eyewitnesses remain. It's why deniers hold a special hatred and obsessively pursue them. After all they represent the truth, the truth that the Holocaust happened and that Arab terrorists murdered thousands of Americans and that the Flight 93 passengers, unarmed, fought to retake control of the plane, to save lives on the ground.

The modern Holocaust deniers were a direct outgrowth of pro-Nazi lies put out by Nazi sympathizers in America. The 9/11 conspiracists are direct outgrowths of the far right and the far left's hatred of America and sympathy for its enemies. In both cases they're domestic enemies obsessed with covering up an atrocity in order to continue their campaigns against America and the Jews. It's no surprise that there's a good deal of crossover between Holocaust deniers and 9/11 deniers.

Both have gotten quite far. Holocaust deniers have an international platform now, thanks to Iran and the rest of the Muslim world, which has never made any secret of their sympathies for Hitler and Nazi Germany. (Indeed the birth of modern Palestinian Arab terrorism can be traced to the Pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem.)

9/11 conspiracists, are getting positive coverage, particularly in Europe, where embracing anything Anti-american is considered its own justification.

In fighting their war against memory and truth, they need to persecute and assault those living who still remember. With the death of aging Holocaust survivors, Holocaust deniers know their job will become much easier, when they no longer have to confront people who were actually there and bear the marks of it on them. 9/11 Deniers have no such comfort. It will be nearly a century before they can be rid of every eyewitness to 9/11. But like the Holocaust deniers, like all deniers, they will only grow shriller in their volume as they try to shout down the truth, while they wait.

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comments:

People that would harass and assault witnesses to the holocaust and 9/11 are a pathetic lot indeed. Clearly they've invested so much of their indentities into denying history that the last remnants of truth--the witnesses--is so threatening to their sense of self that they lash out.

They can't face the truth that they're wrong so naturally they'll do anything to alter history--including attacking victim/witnesses.

These people are scum of the earth. And attacking a 78-year-old holocaust survivor is about as low as a human being can get (second only to the monsters that actually participated in the holocaust and deaths of 6 million.)

Hey Keliata! Yes, Klingon! LOL Usually deniers are two dreadlocks shy of a Marley, so I figure they would naturally believe in the existence of Klingons, speak it and probably believe it originally came from Area 51 and not Marc Orkand. :] They also probably all reside in Multnomah County in Oregon where Klingon is listed as an official language! (happy grin)

What one cotton pickin' second ... trying to shut up the "conspirators" is just as bad!! Maybe the truth will upset all of us, but we can't go around punching people to defend the "truth", the analogy to Buzz defending himself just doesn't fit.

Yes calling someone like Buzz Aldrin , who is also a senior citizen now, the names that kid did, deserved a punch.It is evident his parents didnt raise him properly that he gets up in people's faces like he does.Poor upbringing. His mother should be ashamed of herself.

killtown, if I were you I wouldn't go around promoting that piece of idiocy you call a blog

Your pieces there are even more pathetic

You don't feel you're getting your money's worth for the photo? You're not supposed to be. The money is going to a charity, not to pay for the photo.

Oh and don't forget your grand expose how you made out a check to the wrong name and *gasp* still had it cashed. Clearly this proves Val is out to make money by giving people the name of a charity and secretly plotting to have morons like you, put her name on the check instead.

I stopped reading once I got to your "hilarious" photoshops of the towers. It's just a little reminder of how your kind are lower than excrement and more repulsive.

killtowns blog is made up of his own assumptions that he tries to pass off as reliable information.If you look you see its all conjecture and made up stuff that they pass off as real.The nitpick each and every situation questioning everyones veracity but their own.The real phoney information comes from these deniers.They hate the United States and that is their prime motivation.

I'm all in favor of "debate" and all that jazz, but some of these conspiracy theorists definitely push my limits. Assault, kidnapping or harassment is not the way to make a point. Sad to say, but Wiesel should probably get bodyguards.

However I also wonder to what degree this phenomenon is related to invasive media practices that seem to be becoming increasingly prevalent (such as staking out people's home or work and then badgering them to get a comment, or some of the more outrageous celebrity stalkings done by paparazzi).

Is the blurring of the lines of what's appropriate in the name of "truth" playing a role in encouraging self-styled muckrakers to expose "conspiracies", by any means necessary? Or is believing in conspiracy theories already indicative that someone's unhinged?

"besides as we learned from enterprise's retconning, they probably think they're the smooth browed klingons who got genetically engineered "

ROFL!!! I wouldn't doubt it at all! LOL!!!

As for the annonymous comment on Buzz. That young idiot got off lucky. He deserved to have Buzz beat the crap out of him (preferably put him in intensive care) for his arrogance and disrespectful attitude towards a man who is his elder.